If you do not earn enough to cover your expenses and show some profit, then you have to consider what to do about it. There are four possibilities:

You can raise your rates, something that, ironically, freelancers seem most reluctant to do, it is the first thing most business owners would think of doing in such a situation, if they possibly could.

You can increase your workload. This is feasible in some fields and not in others. Most editors, for example, cannot learn to edit any faster, and their income is limited by how much they can physically accomplish. On the other hand, you may subcontract, that is, hire someone to work for you and take part of his or her earnings. This works especially well if you can find someone to train who wants to learn you trade. You can also often subcontract with colleagues when they are in slow periods.

You can expand into related kinds of work that pay better or that you can do faster. One editor, learned to do indexing. Fewer people have indexing skills compared to the number who copy-edit, and the hourly rate for indexing is higher than for copy-editing and proofreading.

Finally, you can reduce your expectations. While freelancers can do and earn a healthy living, free-lancing will probably not make you rich. As a general rule, unless rare luck strikes, or you are willing to expand through subcontracting or finding new and more lucrative areas in which to work, your income will probably not soar dramatically. On the other hand, it should rise steadily, and it must keep pace with inflation.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.